Tracker Video Analysis: Air Resistance Documents

Main Document

The Tracker Air Resistance Model asks students to explore air resistance of falling coffee cups by considering both viscous (linear) and drag (quadratic) models. Students see a video of falling cups and explore dynamical models that are overlayed on the video. It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive containing Tracker (video analysis program), movies, and some initial analysis. Double clicking the tracker_air_resistance.jar file will run the program if Java is installed on your computer.

Tracker Air Resistance Model is one of several Tracker models used to incorporate computational physics in introductory physics. Tracker, a video analysis program with dynamical modeling, is an Open Source Physics tool. Additional models and programs can be found by searching ComPADRE for Open Source Physics or Tracker.